we all know that the man has released some crap after 1988, but that's only because he has released way too many albums after his peak (82-87), with too much filler or embarrassing songs; the way I see it, Prince should have stopped with the "one album per year" thing, he should have released one new album every two, three or EVEN four years after 1988...

for me, this could have been a KILLER/FLAWLESS post-1988 career

D&P 1991

LoveSymbol 1992

TGE 1994

Emancipation (one disc only) 1996

Rave (remix) (1999)

TRC (2001)

Musicology (2004)

3121 (2006)

LotusFlow3r (2009)

20Ten (2010)

new album? 2012?

so, the point is: can you ignore/forgive his frequent mistakes/bullshit of the post-1988 era and just concentrate on the good stuff he has released during the last 22 years?

[Edited 12/15/11 10:57am]

I agree. It's true. I think a new album will be out in 2012.. I think releasing an album every two or 3 years is good. Especially now. You can't expect to release a great album every year.

JoeTyler said:

we all know that the man has released some crap after 1988, but that's only because he has released way too many albums after his peak (82-87), with too much filler or embarrassing songs; the way I see it, Prince should have stopped with the "one album per year" thing, he should have released one new album every two, three or EVEN four years after 1988...

for me, this could have been a KILLER/FLAWLESS post-1988 career

D&P 1991

LoveSymbol 1992

TGE 1994

Emancipation (one disc only) 1996

Rave (remix) (1999)

TRC (2001)

Musicology (2004)

3121 (2006)

LotusFlow3r (2009)

20Ten (2010)

new album? 2012?

so, the point is: can you ignore/forgive his frequent mistakes/bullshit of the post-1988 era and just concentrate on the good stuff he has released during the last 22 years?

[Edited 12/15/11 10:57am]

Again, different strokes for different folks. I mean, you just indirectly called "jughead" flawless.

I dig Prince career as it is.

I don't think his "bad" post 1988 music needs to be ignored. For me there are a handful of albums and many individual songs from that era that stand up to his peak years. Sure, it would have been great if his peak had lasted longer but every great artist has a, ahem, purple patch and after that is a decline. He was never going to be brilliant forever so you just need to take the good with the bad.

JoeTyler said:

we all know that the man has released some crap after 1988, but that's only because he has released way too many albums after his peak (82-87), with too much filler or embarrassing songs; the way I see it, Prince should have stopped with the "one album per year" thing, he should have released one new album every two, three or EVEN four years after 1988...

for me, this could have been a KILLER/FLAWLESS post-1988 career

D&P 1991

LoveSymbol 1992

TGE 1994

Emancipation (one disc only) 1996

Rave (remix) (1999)

TRC (2001)

Musicology (2004)

3121 (2006)

LotusFlow3r (2009)

20Ten (2010)

new album? 2012?

so, the point is: can you ignore/forgive his frequent mistakes/bullshit of the post-1988 era and just concentrate on the good stuff he has released during the last 22 years?

[Edited 12/15/11 10:57am]

It's all a matter of opinions. I, personally, don't think he's released a lot fo "filler." I like and/or love 90% of the material released after 1988.

You also have to rememer that outside of hardcore fan base, people are not familiar with all of Prince's catalog...especially with the NPGMC stuff and the other internet music.

You seem to have left a lot of 'bad' music in your list....

TheFreakerFantastic said:

You seem to have left a lot of 'bad' music in your list....

Nope. The bad music effects my perception of the good. The good doesn't sound as great to me in hindsight because now I suspect he may not have really known what he was doing all along. ANd a lot of other people covered his azz.

I don't listen to the shit I don't like, but I will say - I'm happy to go back and re-evaluate something if it sparks my interest, I've done this and had a change of heart on many things over the years. You just never know what's going to click with you down the road!

Not an issue for me - as far as I'm concerned Prince hasn't released any bad music.

It's all still been somewhere between good and excellent. Maybe the ratio of excellent stuff isn't as high as it was in the 80s but that doesn't make it bad.

@ this thread

!!!!!

The OP's question is based on a false pretense, which is that Prince pre-1988 was infallible.

~His first album alone proves that thesis is false.

I couldn't see Prince functioning like that. I thank him personally for doing what he did between 1978 and 1988. Anything past that seems like a bonus. Some of it is real cool, some of it is okay, some of it is forgettable. It is what it is.

Timmy84 said:

I couldn't see Prince functioning like that. I thank him personally for doing what he did between 1978 and 1988. Anything past that seems like a bonus. Some of it is real cool, some of it is okay, some of it is forgettable. It is what it is.

His legacy is secured, and I know the boards love to complain but we must admit that as long as he still produces music...some of it is still decent, just further padding of the resume. We don't need it, but its pleasing none the less.

(I mean Musicology and 3121 sold very well and are good records, but they never came close to disloding SOTT or PR or 1999 or whatever. Or ATWIAD for that matter.)

RRA said:

Timmy84 said:

I couldn't see Prince functioning like that. I thank him personally for doing what he did between 1978 and 1988. Anything past that seems like a bonus. Some of it is real cool, some of it is okay, some of it is forgettable. It is what it is.

His legacy is secured, and I know the boards love to complain but we must admit that as long as he still produces music...some of it is still decent, just further padding of the resume. We don't need it, but its pleasing none the less.

(I mean Musicology and 3121 sold very well and are good records, but they never came close to disloding SOTT or PR or 1999 or whatever. Or ATWIAD for that matter.)

Yeah there were great moments in both albums. I can't dismiss Prince even when some of his post-1988 material seems lackluster in my opinion.

You want Rave remix but you don't want Come, Chaos and Disorder, or N.E.W.S?? lol Your choice of albums looks boring and ordinary.

If you want him to be commercially successful, sure I guess he could've released fewer albums and tried hard to focus on mainstream sound. But I thank him for releasing as many albums as he did and giving us many choices. So no thanks

xLiberiangirl said:

I agree. It's true. I think a new album will be out in 2012.. I think releasing an album every two or 3 years is good. Especially now. You can't expect to release a great album every year.

It's not about the frequency of the releases but the quality of his work.

I ignore his post-1988 music all the time.

So does Prince, for the most part.

it's hard for me to answer, because 1 of my all time fav Prince tunes, Electric Chair, was released in '89, the very next year

Praxis said:

it's hard for me to answer, because 1 of my all time fav Prince tunes, Electric Chair, was released in '89, the very next year

what's that still from?

RicoN said:

Praxis said:

it's hard for me to answer, because 1 of my all time fav Prince tunes, Electric Chair, was released in '89, the very next year

what's that still from?

A 1989 appearance on Saturday Night Live.

rialb said:

RicoN said:

what's that still from?

A 1989 appearance on Saturday Night Live.

I thought he only appeared on SNL ONCE! Wow...

JoeTyler said:

we all know that the man has released some crap after 1988, but that's only because he has released way too many albums after his peak (82-87), with too much filler or embarrassing songs; the way I see it, Prince should have stopped with the "one album per year" thing, he should have released one new album every two, three or EVEN four years after 1988...

for me, this could have been a KILLER/FLAWLESS post-1988 career

D&P 1991

LoveSymbol 1992

TGE 1994

Emancipation (one disc only) 1996

Rave (remix) (1999)

TRC (2001)

Musicology (2004)

3121 (2006)

LotusFlow3r (2009)

20Ten (2010)

new album? 2012?

Disagree.

Main problem post 88 was that his albums became too long.

I will give you Batman tho'. He shouldn't have done that (side)project, but he supposedly just did it for the big money, and from then on it all went downhill...

Graffiti Bridge would have been a killer Prince CD as a single album and without the movie. Drop most of the tracks with associated artists and you have a jewel.

Diamonds and Pearls could have really been worth its name, if it wouldn't have suffered from the terror of Daddy Pop, Jughead and Push.

Lovesymbol is overrated. Filled with silly segues and okay, but out of synch songs that would have been better off as B-sides. Drop the segues, The Max, Blue Light, I Wanna melt with U, Sweet baby, Arrogance and The Flow and you have a really good 10 track Prince album.

Come should have never been released as it is. It's much too dark this way. The original configurations were much stronger imo and it should have never been seperated from her more positive sister TGE, which subsequently suffered from segues and B-side worthy material too..

While I loved Emancipation when it came out because it was such a treat of music, I agree that it would have been much, much stronger if it would have been stripped to only 1 disc mainly consisting of the music of disc II and III.

The Truth was and still is good, but still a couple of songs too much and Crystal Ball had a quite terrible configuration. In my opinion...

The configuration on NPS is nice, but I dislike too many of the songs on it. I think he would have made a better album if he would have made a combination of the best of NPS and Rave.

From TRC on, I think he is getting better again in compiling and configurating albums. But one thing still always remains I feel, and that is that most albums simply take too long. And always have some or more mediocre songs that should have been left of as B-sides or outtakes.

so, the point is: can you ignore/forgive his frequent mistakes/bullshit of the post-1988 era and just concentrate on the good stuff he has released during the last 22 years?

So yeah I can ignore and forgive him. I understand why he did most of what he did. I just reconfigure his albums the way I like them, to 10 track killer Prince albums.

My

what? II and III!

[Edited 12/16/11 10:56am]

Lot's of people can't stomach the crap songs he put out before 1988 too. I always thought there were only a few honest gems on every single album. the rest are usually failed experiments or not quite baked right.

ufoclub said:

Lot's of people can't stomach the crap songs he put out before 1988 too. I always thought there were only a few honest gems on every single album. the rest are usually failed experiments or not quite baked right.

Where are these people? lol

I think the main secret in the 80's was that albums simply NEVER had more than 9 or 10 songs, unless they were double albums.

With the CD in the 90's this changed.

Tremolina said:

ufoclub said:

Lot's of people can't stomach the crap songs he put out before 1988 too. I always thought there were only a few honest gems on every single album. the rest are usually failed experiments or not quite baked right.

Where are these people? lol

I think the main secret in the 80's was that albums simply NEVER had more than 9 or 10 songs, unless they were double albums.

With the CD in the 90's this changed.

True about albums having less cuts back in the day, but shit, every single album in the eyes of a non obsessed fan has lots of duds vs a few winners. For example the SOTT album, most people I listened to that with back in 1987 thought a majority of it was crap or not quite working right including tracks like Play in the Sunshine, It, Slow Love...

time and repeat listenings and live versions have now changed my perception of that album to where I really like those songs. But that'snot how it was back when I first listened to the borrowed album on a turntable.

Go backwards to Parade and you have Christopher Tracy's Parade, Do U Lie, even Mountains sounded a bit off on the contruction of the chorus to a lot of people (which is why it didn't hit as a single).

On the other hands those same albums had bonafide gems like Kiss, SOTT, Housequake, Girls and Boys that ring like diamonds to non fans ears.

Even on the most popular album like Purple Rain, tracks like Take Me with U, Baby I'm a Star, Computer Blue didn't exactly gel into exciting, cool things for most regular people. Most people I know were kind of meh about those tracks. I even played the bootleg extended version of Computer Blue for a friend that loves stuff like Shockedelica and Rockhard in a Funky Place, and he was like, I just don't really like that song. I completely understand why, because I remember my exact reaction listening to it for the first time back in 1985, and it was not that cool. (This was before I saw the movie or had seen any live performances by Prince...before I really was familiar with the details of his whole thang. That was my honest reaction the the music, regardless of who made it)

You got to look at his albums outside of the nostalgia shades of fandom. I mean the album with the strongest cut ratio is probably 1999. In the long run that one pleases people old and young even today.

Personally I look at the music from a production/creative experimentation standpoint which is why I favor something like Black Album as my favorite album with the strongest ratio of densely produced repeat playable songs for my tastes.

Timmy84 said:

rialb said:

A 1989 appearance on Saturday Night Live.

I thought he only appeared on SNL ONCE! Wow...

3 times (I think).

Party Up, Electric Chair and then he did those two horrible songs a few years ago.